Competing

I'm a competitive person by nature, but not when it comes to Crossfit. I know better. I may be one of the biggest baseball fans currently living in the northwest, and I will talk about how awesome the Tigers are to anyone who will listen, but I am not joining the softball team this year. Newsflash: I'm not athletically-inclined. I hate playing team sports. I feel bad for the other members of my team. Crossfit tends to bring out the competitiveness with some people, but not me. I'll look at a few other people's scores sometimes and see if I can beat them, but I'm really trying to beat myself. 

But now I find myself in the midst of 2 crossfit competitions - The Crossfit Games and our own March Madness. The Games are kind of a big deal. They're trying to find the fittest people in the world. They usually hold sectionals, then regionals, then the games, but Crossfit is getting SO big that they're doing the Open this year. They release a workout each week for 6 weeks and if you want to compete, you can do the workout and submit your score and see how you rank. Top 60 men and women in each region go to regionals. So why am I competing? I don't know.

I've done OK with both the workouts so far. I made the mistake of doing the second one again today. I did it on Thursday and I did fine. I don't know what I was thinking doing it again. 15 box jumps per round X 7 rounds on Thursday and 6 rounds today = some pretty sore calves. And I'm just doing this for fun!

The real competition is on Monday. We've been doing this same workout for the past 6 weeks:

5 burpees

10 pull-ups

15 squats

Short sprint

 As many rounds in this weird time structure. When we started, I was really focused on getting my pull-ups for real. I knew I'd get less rounds than other people, but I also knew we'd be doing this every week and I could really work on them. The first week, my competitor didn't show. I got through the next week easily (solid improvement). Last week, I was sick. I was just really run down and feeling awful. To make it worse, we had to do heavy kettlebell swings before the workout. I got 10 less reps than the week before.  I was banking on my competitor not showing up. He did, but he was also sick and got 23 less reps. I'm in the Final Four! I do have a tough competitor this week - someone who's been making a lot of gains the past month or so, but I will do my best. I'm in it to win it!

I really wish we'd have a Crossfit Trivia contest. That is something I could win easily. EASILY!!!!

You won't see #8 in Right Field this year.

I Don't Like Volleyball

To be quite honest, I really don't like playing any team sports. I've never been good at them and I end up feeling bad for the other team. This Saturday, we played hooverball, which was taking a medicine ball (6#, 10#? I don't remember) and getting it over the post to the other side, whoever catches it throws it right back. It was all a bit too much for me and I'm sorry, but I didn't have a good time. Then the workout involved throwing them over to our partner 50 times and then rowing 500m. It was a tough day, but I made it. Just don't ask me to be on your team again. My personal life got busy this week, as I made it up to LBCC to get everything set for teaching this fall. I had so much to do for that, but I still made it into crossfit 4 times this week. I like coming in at the 5:15 time because I can go there straight from work and I like the people who also show up at that time. We did a lot of weights this week, including crossfit total, which is good because I always seem to miss those days. I need to have an idea of what I can do. We also did Barbara this week. I did better than I thought I would, even though I did the lowest amount. I finished quickly. I do need to realize that I can do more than I think and I need to start doing more than I think.